Packets are routed by routers through a network, from source devices to destination devices. A packet can traverse one or multiple routers in the network. Each router can include a routing table that contains routing information for use in routing a packet to a next segment of the network. Note that the next segment can lead to another router, or the next segment can lead to a destination device.
As the number of network nodes in a network increases, the amount of routing information that may be stored in a routing table also increase correspondingly. This can lead to routing tables of relatively large size, which can impact the speed at which routers can perform a lookup of routing information in the routing tables.